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Recently, a station manager brought me aboard to work with a new air talent that had just come to the station. Even though the new guy done a couple of sessions with me a year or two ago, he’s still afraid of being coached. The boss told me the guy’s exact words were that “He doesn’t want someone coming along trying to make him sound like everyone else.”

Well, first of all, that’s not what I do. Yes, I have some basic principles that have been proven to work over the course of coaching over 350 stations in all formats. But a lot of times, a talent will harbor this fear of making changes simply because (1) he didn’t work with a good coach, (2) he thinks he knows all he needs to know, and/or (3) he associates the “bits” he does with BEING his identity.

So in case you’re approached with working with a talent coach (and there are only about three that deserve to be called that), I’m going to lay out my 3 Steps of coaching over the course of the next few tips.

Step 1:
Correcting bad habits, and “weeding the garden”.

A lot of things that people are taught nowadays are wrong, because the person telling them they’re good heard the copy of the copy of the copy of the original, and have no idea what the Strategy behind certain techniques actually was at the point of origin. For example, I heard dozens of stations try to copy KVIL in Dallas when morning man Ron Chapman was King of the Hill, but what worked for KVIL wouldn’t work anywhere else, because they were aimed at a specific target audience unique to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.

So we start with what Strategy is, as opposed to just Tactics. And as a natural offshoot of that, I remove all the typical deejay “crutches” that most talents don’t even realize they have, like always saying “the basics” in the same order, doing the ridiculous double time checks, ending with your name or the station’s name into commercials, always starting Content breaks by talking about yourself first, etc. etc. etc.

This takes a while, just like an actor with a briefcase full of great reviews from when he played Hamlet at the “Grazing Trough Dinner Theater” needs a little time to put that stuff aside when he gets into the Actors Studio.

A very good talent I work with did a contest the other day, and had a great winner, who was really surprised and happy about winning lunch for her office from a local deli. He did a good job with her in the winner call he played on the air, but at the end, he added a whole bunch of “blah blah blah” about the specific hoops the winner had to jump through to get her prize, and along the way, he mentioned the name of a person in the office that no listener would know or care about.

This is what I sent him in his coaching session recap:

Here’s how it should have unfolded: Right after you told her she had won lunch, compliments of Jackson Street Deli and she said, “I can do that,” you said “Sweet.”
GO!! Right there! No person listening needs to hear the inner mechanics of how you get the prize.

Anytime you end with a “left brain” thought, you suck the wind out of that moment of winning. You can do the other stuff off the air.

By the way, I’d also wait to do the “next time we’ll play” plug until the NEXT break, not glomp it onto the end of the winner call. CELEBRATE THE WIN, then GO.

This “never end with the ‘left brain’” thing applies to everything you do. When you revert to data, numbers, times, etc. at the end, you’re just a buzz kill.

In the last tip, I talked about learning something about you each day, and how essential that “reveal” is to becoming a three-dimensional personality to the listener. Here’s a deeper look at it:

You should reveal something about yourself EVERY day, but not with an agenda.

Last week, on an automotive Talk show I coach in Houston, the female cohost said, “Ask Mike your question, ‘cause if you ask me, I’ll just say ‘Pick the fast one, in black.’” That changed her from being just the “announcer” of the show to a Personality – in ONE LINE.

That’s the kind of reveal that works best, because it seemingly just slipped out as you were talking. And that’s the key: It has to sound accidental or incidental – NATURAL to share, not just you bringing up a subject so you can sound off on it.

When something revealing just plops out in the course of the conversation, that’s when people actually NOTICE what was just said.

Here’s part of a post-Halloween coaching session recap with a morning team I work with in Austin, Texas…

Steve and Amy,

Well, look at what we learned about you in Tuesday’s show…

You’re aware of what’s going on, and you have hearts (coverage of the New York City tragedy).

Amy has managed to rationalize not wanting to go out in the cold to ‘Trick or Treat’ with her kids as THEIR decision. (And Steve called her on it.)

Steve’s son considers “Mr. Blue” – a character that is apparently only about wearing blue clothing – to an acceptable Trick or Treat costume. (But he ended up wearing a Coke bottle costume instead. Not really sure if that’s better.)

Yes, Houston’s being in the World Series is great for the morale of the city, etc. — but to Amy, it’s all about a stolen base meaning she gets a free taco.

This is what engaging shows are made of.

Every person on the air should ask himself/herself two questions:

What did the listener learn about me today?
And why does it matter?

If you just did a show where I didn’t learn anything about you, it was a wasted opportunity. And it matters because if I don’t learn about you, we’re not friends. It’s about the common ground between you and me. If we don’t have any, there’s no real point in listening to you.

I can put every song you play into my iPhone. I have the Weather Channel app. News is everywhere, at the push of a button. And my car has built-in navigation with turn-by-turn instructions.
Yes, the music, News, Weather, and Traffic are part of a good station. But that isn’t enough. However, YOU…ARE…enough – if you REVEAL. The broadcast world is full of nameless, personality-less voices. No one remembers who they are.

In August of 1972, a group named The Main Ingredient released a hit single called “Everybody Plays the Fool”. (The lead singer, by the way, was Cuba Gooding, Sr. – yes, the actor’s father.)

None of that has anything to do with this week’s tip.

Last time, we talked about really starting to gain understanding and control of your inflection, so you lose the “disc jockey” sound and simply become the one voice in the room people just want to listen to.

Here’s another step.

What all great air talents and great voice actors have in common is that they’re INTERESTING.

If you’re still early in your career and aren’t being offered the opportunities you want, it’s not going to get better if you just work on your voice. You have to make yourself the best CANDIDATE for the job. In radio, or in the voice acting arena, the most successful and longest-running careers inevitably go to the voices that we find the most intriguing. The ear finds them like it finds a catchy tune. And just like in the musical world, there’s no one sound that’s the standard.

Instead of working on vocal gyrations, work on being INTERESTING. That’s how careers are made.

There comes a time in every career when you have to stop being a polished reader of words or some sort of veneer, and just become yourself. That “self” may be a somewhat invented persona like Larry David’s on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, or it may as revealing of who you really are as possible, given the format.

But you need voice acting chops to accomplish this. Here’s a three-word exercise that’ll help you both on the air and in commercial voiceover work:

Really

Really

Really

You can’t just say this word the same way every time, because it can mean interest (“really?”), surprise (“really!”) or suspicion bordering on dry near-dismissal (“really…”).

Once each of those inflections sounds totally honest, totally NOT contrived or “acted” or “projected” beyond what would be the right way to say it in THAT moment – well, you’ve learned something.

Step 2 is to get someone you trust to tell you the absolute truth, and ask that person to listen to it. (And no, you might NOT know yet what you sound like to everyone else…until you do. It takes time.)

You hear this every day, if you listen long enough: The same stories, with almost, or nearly almost the exact same wording every newscast. This is a quick way to not stand out at all.

One of radio’s greatest pioneers, Gordon McLendon, even though he primarily did Top 40 (which he and Kansas City’s Todd Storz INVENTED), was known for hiring and training incredibly talented News staffs. I had the great pleasure of working with two of them, at KNUS in Dallas (which helped change the landscape of FM radio in the early seventies) and KILT, longtime Top 40 giant in Houston.

Both news staffs were incredible – chock full of amazing writers with riveting deliveries, every bit as much “personalities” as the disc jockeys were. And each of them learned on Day One the McLendon Rule: Rewrite every story for every newscast.

Yes, the basic facts were the same. But the entries INTO stories that repeated were always just a little different, and what was left out of one newscast would be in another one, so rather than dull repetition, those tiny differences made the listener’s brain receive it as NEW information.

This principle was later documented in a study at Cal Tech, where they found that just repeating something led to boredom, but even the slightest changes fired new synapses in the brain. Gordon McLendon had no such research. He simply felt it was the right thing to do.

This is largely an overlooked area of radio news segments, but when you do it, you lift yourself above all your competition. And it’s easy, requiring minimal effort.

Have you listened to your news lately? Maybe a better question is “Has your audience paid any attention to it?”

A morning show host I work with recently found cause to read a poem on the air. While he meant well, it really stalled out the momentum of the show, and basically just sounded less personal. Here’s the right technique to use:

Paraphrase it, using your own words to frame the subject, then only directly quote a very SHORT quote or passage from whatever it is you’re bringing to the table – whether it’s a poem, like in this case, or an article about something.

My longstanding rule is “Only people with cataracts want to be read to,” but it’s more than just that. Anybody can read something; it’s the easiest and safest thing to do from a talent standpoint, because you can hide behind someone else’s words, not have to work very hard to fill the time, and dodge accountability for whatever the Content is.

But that’s not what we’re here for.

When you just read something verbatim in its entirety, the listener doesn’t learn anything about you, except for what your inflection might reveal. However, even that is limited, because if you do take a different tone from how it’s written, you can seem at cross purposes with the subject matter – in effect, impeaching your own source of information.

You’re FORCED to humanize it more when you read less of it. And that helps the listener bond with you. I often tell talent to “crack your chest open and show us what’s in there,” because in the long run, that’s what becoming a star is all about.

On Friday, October 13th 2017, Leta Hopwood passed away, two months to the day after her 92nd birthday.

Hopwood was her maiden name. She was my mother.
She taught me to read when I was three years old. (By the time I entered 1st grade, I was reading at 7th grade level.)

She taught me to sing harmony when I was nine, as we drove from Shreveport, Louisiana to Colorado Springs after my dad was drafted into the Army. (I later sang in a very popular band, and have sung on dozens of jingles that you might have heard.)

She worked as a legal secretary when I was young, probably only making $400-$500 per month during that era, but still managed to save back $10 a week for me to take guitar lessons. (I’ve played guitar on quite a few records, and dozens of jingles.)

And she taught me about Jesus, and how even if you’re perfect, there will be someone who doesn’t particularly like you or agree with your opinions. And she taught me how to get over being hurt by that, and to forgive them, regardless of how they felt.

But most importantly, she taught me that your personal feelings are more powerful than your opinions, and that no matter what you think, your feelings are almost always evident – and they should be.

When you go on the air today, if all you do is quote somebody else’s thoughts, read liners, or be “nice” and “easy to listen to”, you’re not living up to what Leta would think was your full potential.

But more importantly, you’re not really giving of yourself, and you’re not really making any personal impact on the listener.

Leta had an impact on everyone she ever met. And if you ever work with me, her teachings will impact your life, too.

Millennial Overspeak is a new dialect. Not every single person in that age group uses it, of course, but it’s an easy (albeit cheap shot) reference for unnecessary glitz, so it’s become a hard-and-fast impression.

Phrases such as “I’m SO going to do that,” or describing something as “Unbelievably, spectacularly good” is overkill. And like everything served up too often, you actually LOSE impact. So the words you’re choosing to make something “bigger” or more “dramatic” usually just make whatever you’re talking about come across as pompous, overstated, or simply trying too hard. These are qualities that push the listener away, rather than bring him or her closer to you.

Let’s try to make our words count. “He was dead” doesn’t need an adverb or adjective. “He was SO dead” doesn’t make it more expressive; it just makes you sound like you have to expand everything in order to feel important. Eww.